Nick

by Michael Farris Smith

  In the middle of the night he returned to Judah’s and found him sitting on the top step to the top floor. His face and hair damp with sweat. Lips smeared red from blood and wild eyes chasing ghosts.

  “Judah,” Nick said.

  “The river. Across the river. Run the wire across the river and then back this way. She’s over there by the river.”

  Nick eased up the stairs.

  “Stay down,” Judah said. He raised a feeble arm and waved it slowly.

  “I’m down,” Nick said softly. “We’re down. Let’s go.”

  “She’s out there and we can’t leave her. She’s out there.”

  “She’s okay. Let’s go.”

  “The river’s high. It won’t stop raining. It won’t stop and we can’t drive the stakes if it won’t stop raining.”

  “We need to get back,” he said. “Retreat, Judah.”

  “She’s out there.”

  “Someone got her. She’ll meet us. We have to go now.”

  Judah fell over to the side and then slumped forward, almost tumbling down the stairs before Nick caught him. The man’s head rolled and Nick steadied him, pushed him upright. He slid Judah’s arm around his neck and lifted, then scooped him and carried the broken man to the apartment door, surprised by how light he was. Like a child. Judah’s door was halfopen and Nick pushed it with his foot. He laid him down on the bed and covered him with a blanket and turned off the lamp.

  He walked back into the sitting room. Judah called out for Colette and then snapped an order to a private. Then he coughed. When he was done coughing he cried. And then he finally fell silent.

  Nick looked around the room. Black-and-white framed photographs on the wall. Different women with different children. Four bearded men who looked like brothers. Judah and he guessed Colette standing at the door of the saloon. A mustached man with his arms folded across the back of a chair.

  A rectangle rug covered the hardwood floor and highbacked chairs sat at each corner of the rug. A mahogany coffee table in the center. Bookcases from floor to ceiling along one wall and half the shelves filled with books and the other half the home of vases, a cigar box, a silver tray and crystal wine glasses, ceramic bowls, handpainted plates. Burgundy curtains hung along the sides of the windows and brushed the floor. A room that seemed to be waiting for someone to occupy it.

  A rolltop desk sat between the two windows. Nick walked over and touched the brass knob, looked over his shoulder as if Judah may be watching from the doorway. A newspaper was folded on top of the desk and he picked it up. Looked at the front page. Thanksgiving 1919.

  He set the newspaper aside and raised the knob and the desk cover rolled back. A spider darted toward the back corner and disappeared. And Nick found that the desk was empty but for three items. A pocket watch. A wedding band. A small brown bottle.

  Nick picked up the bottle. No label and no markings. He pulled out the cork and smelled. A faint scent of garlic. He returned the cork just as Judah rolled in his stupor and fell from the bed to the floor. Nick went back to him but let him be as Judah did not wake, only lay with his knees drawn up and arms wrapped around his neck as if protecting himself from the things that lived behind his eyes.

  Why am I alive, Nick wondered. He touched Judah’s scarred forearm and then he raised his own shirtsleeve. Touched his own smooth skin. Touched his own cheeks and the back of his neck. No signs and no proof that I was even there as long as I can keep my hand still and one day even that will go away.

  Judah gagged and stretched his arms and legs then he recoiled. His eyes never opening. And then there in the dark Nick saw the old woman sitting by him in the barn. The smell of manure and her calm stare. The silver hair cut crooked across her forehead and in streams around her neck and the gnarled knuckles of a lifetime of work. The husband in his overalls beside her. They were here in this room with this man with bloodstained sheets and Nick saw their faces and he loved them in ways that he had never loved his own mother and father. He stood next to Judah and wished for the old couple and prayed for the old couple and he imagined them sleeping a peaceful and dreamless sleep and he wanted them to know he was alive.

  Help me, the voice whispered. And the old couple disappeared at its sound. Nick turned to look for it as if it was coming from another room. Help me. He leaned down and put his ear to Judah to see if it had come from him.

  Nick rose. Held by the dark. Seized into the void because he hadn’t been bad enough to go to hell or good enough to ascend to heaven and he was only here. His sole accomplishment had been to survive and even that seemed like an accident. He had always imagined being alone to be the same thing as being at peace but he knew that was a lie. And the only time he had not felt alone was in the attic in Paris and even then he would not let go and let it become a part of his life. He would not leave with her. He would not do the one thing he knew he should do.

  He touched his elbows where they had bled as he crawled across the night. The single shriek from the voice that had begged him for mercy. He was on his belly and his legs were useless and he bled and he did not know why he was not the one lying in the bed scarred by the gas. He wanted to leave the room but he did not want to leave the room because it would mean going across the hall where he would struggle to sleep or sleep and dream darkly. Instead he would stand here. Listening to Judah struggle for breath. Listening to the whisper for help.

  29

  Colette was bound by the wrists and tied to the metal bedframe and gagged with a bandana. She was unsure exactly where she was but she could tell by the bellow of the steamboats that she couldn’t be more than two or three blocks from the wharf. The room was small and square with the bed the only furniture and no windows and a sour smell. The man who had brought her there and bound her kept the lights turned off when he was gone and if it was day or night she did not know. She kept thinking that she would hear the footsteps of others either above or below but there was only his heavy, plodding tread when he came or went. Slow, dragging feet. The street sounds were random and distant and she could only figure she was tucked away in some alley in a forgotten cluster of rooms and she knew that he was the only one who knew she was there. She dozed in and out but the tick tack of rat feet in the dark kept her anxious and far from sleep.

  When he came into the room he never turned on a light. He would open the door and stand at the threshold and the faint light from the hallway would break into the room. He was a giant figure but she never could make out his face. The doorway filled with his form and he breathed heavy as if chasing or being chased. Behind him in the hallway sat a wooden wagon that rattled as he arrived and as he left and it was filled with something she couldn’t make out. Each time he closed the door behind him and walked methodically around the room in the blackness. In the stillness. His stature seeming to grow as he panted. Snorted. Spit. She kept her eyes following his sounds. His offbeat, exasperated breathing. The sound of a bottle being uncorked. The toss of liquid as the bottle turned up. The smack of his lips and tongue and then the sometimes strange and gentle sobs that followed. But he never touched her though he would come close. He would stand right in front of her or kneel next to her and he stank of booze and the street and his smell made her gag and then he would laugh and then lower his jaw right in front of her nose and growl into her face. Is it bad? Do you hate it? Do you hate it? Because you don’t know anything.

  He would then fall back on the floor and sometimes cry, sometimes beat his fists against the hardwood. And then he would crawl to the door and open it and still on his knees he would reach out and grab the handle to the wagon and pull it inside. Close the door. Black again. This their world. He would lie next to the wagon with his arm draped over the side and his hand touching whatever filled the wagon and he mumbled and babbled in a faint and sinking voice as if he were speaking from the bottom of a well.

  Eventually he would raise himself and leave again. When he left he took the wagon with him and she counted two other doors closing
as he was on his way out of the building.

  In her solitude she wondered if she had fought hard enough when he squeezed her around the neck and dragged her away. She was right there in the street. She replayed it in her mind but it had happened fast and she knew that she had kicked and slapped and punched but he was so much bigger and so much stronger and he knew where he was taking her and it had been a quick trip. When he had gotten her into the room he held her pressed against the floor, his hand around her throat, her throat so thin and fragile in his hand, and he swore he would squeeze the life out of her right then if she made a goddamn peep or if she did anything but put her hands over her head while he tied them then he said if you ever wanna see daylight again you better not so much as lick your lips. I will make you disappear and you will rot right here if you try anything. His knees straddled her body and she could tell by the sound of his voice and by the tremble in his hands that he was somewhere at the end of a line. So she did as he said. She lay still and limp and he tied her wrists and then he moved off her and slid her against the wall. Sitting her up and then binding her to the bedrail. She replayed this over and over in her waiting hours and she wanted to find a moment where she had missed an opportunity but she couldn’t. And now she wondered if there would be another.

  The days passed and she didn’t know how many. The sleeping and waking hours had no meaning in the dark. He had fed her bread twice and poured liquor into her mouth before gagging her again, laughing and feeling her throat and telling her to swallow or else. She wondered if anyone was looking for her but she didn’t know who that might even be. Not her girls. Not anyone who owed her money. And those were the only people she knew of anymore. She wondered if Judah was satisfied. Wondered if she would recognize the face of this big man if she ever had the chance to see it. Wondered what was in that wagon and why he seemed to need it. To protect it. To love it. She wondered if she would again see the streets where she had taken her first steps and ridden on her father’s back or if she would shrivel up and die. Her body consumed by the dark. And she wondered if her soul would find its way to the door and slither underneath and make its way toward home or if it too would be disoriented and panicked and unable to escape. Cast forever into this silent and secret room.

  30

  John LaFell first appeared as a figure on the Frenchtown streets the day after the fire. Broad shoulders and a square jaw and heavy brown eyes. His coat was worn through at one elbow and he wore big, laced boots as he shuffled clumsily along in a sleepless and drunken roll. Behind him he pulled a wooden wagon that had once been used for visits to the market but now held a singular item—a bundle wrapped in a patchwork quilt that filled the width and length of the small wagon.

  He was out all hours of the day or night. He pulled the wagon with one hand and drank whiskey from a clear bottle with the other and stumbled and fell and sometimes got up and sometimes lay there and children jumped over or danced around him and when he rose they ran away with squeals and laughter and he trudged on. No words from his mouth and the only sound he made was that of an innocent, heartbroken soul who could not contain grief and released it in random grunts and cries.

  On the third day the grunts and cries stopped and he now dragged a steel pole along as he walked with the wagon. He had taken the four-foot-long pole from the wharf where he had stopped going to work. Once he had used it to wedge between pallets and lift or separate but now he dragged it across the brick streets and it tinged in a hectic pattern as he trod through Frenchtown like some ambling, hopeless portrait of the living dead.

  He stopped eating and only drank and when he ran out of money the good whiskey Samaritan gave him a bottle. When he was too drunk he knelt and slept on his knees and hunched across the bundle as if to protect it. But the sleep never lasted long and he awoke in a shout or swinging his arms at an invisible enemy and he was lucky if a street animal hadn’t pissed on his leg or worse. Then he would wipe the saliva from his mouth and get to his feet and trudge along, the steel pole and the wagon dragging behind.

  On the seventh day his pattern changed again and what had been a mostly quiet, wandering hulk of defeat became a wailing torrent of grief. He reared back his drunk head and screamed toward the rooftops and clouded heavens in no verbal pattern but only in wolflike howls that sent the same children who had days before played around his fallen figure running into doorways and around corners in fear. He wailed and his voice carried through the streets and echoed across the open air cafés and he swung the steel pole at sign posts and street lamps and if anyone approached him or came close to the wagon he howled and his eyes filled with teary, red menace and he was approaching a state of madness strange even to this place.

  In random moments of exhaustion he sat on the sidewalk and leaned against the wagon and drifted in and out of sleep. When his head nodded, the fire blazed in the blackness of his dreams and sent suncolored streaks racing back and forth between his mind and soul. He felt the heat all over his body and the torture that came from knowing you couldn’t escape. He heard the screams and he reached into the flames but he couldn’t get hold of the body the screams came from and he felt the voice slip down into the inferno and disintegrate and he stomped through the flames looking for a way to bring it back, shouting out apologies and regrets but it was gone and so was everything else. This was his dream. His every dream.

  He would walk and rage and drag the steel pole and the wagon and he would drink what anyone would give him and his place as the tragic figure of Frenchtown was coalesced after he was seen on his hands and knees lapping at a puddle to rid his throat of the whiskey burn. Women held hands with their children and took them in the other direction. Men watched him cautiously as he approached with their hands at the ready. From barstools and café chairs they watched him with a blend of shame and fear and care. Even the girls standing in the doorways of the cribs stopped calling to him as he walked past, his once broad, hardworking figure now diminished to a slumped, filthy wraith.

  On the morning of the eighth day, he found himself looking out across the river. Down below men worked and shouted and cargo moved and the clouds were low and blotted out the eastern sun. He drank and watched. Set the bottle down and adjusted the bundle in the wagon and when he raised back up he saw a man hustling up the concrete stairs that led from the wharf to the warehouse. A moment later, the man appeared from the warehouse and hurried in his direction and as the man came closer he recognized Reed.

  He wore a knit hat pulled down to his eyebrows and working gloves and he was out of breath from the quick trip. Reed reached into his coat and pulled out a brown paper bag and handed it to John LaFell.

  “Goddamn you look like shit,” he said and he shoved it toward John. He was bleary and didn’t move and Reed reached out and took his hand and slapped the bag into it. Its contents were hard and knotted and Reed told him to take it and do what you will but you can’t keep doing this shit. If you want to know he’s at his place every day at lunch. You know it, corner of St. Philip and Bourbon. And you know who I’m talking about. Everygoddamnbody knows who started the damn thing. Or do something else I don’t care but for God’s sake you got to do something. I been carrying this thing around with me since Grace told me she saw you the other day with a pig sniffing at your ass while you was passed out. You ain’t got to do nothing with it if you don’t want but here it is. I got to go.

  Reed glanced at the bundle in the wagon and then turned around and was gone. John stared at the brown bag in his hand and then when he looked out again he saw Reed back at work.

  He let the steel pole fall and then watched it roll. He looked back at the patched quilt and the bundle it covered. He opened the brown paper bag and pulled out the pistol and he saw the bullets in the chamber. He took a long drink from the bottle and then with the whiskey still on his tongue he licked the cold pistol from the tip of the handle to the tip of the barrel.

  Colette heard the ting ting tinging of the steel pole in the hallway. And then th
e door opened and he stood there with it by his side like a staff. A lost shepherd. He seemed taller and smelled like death.

  He took two drunken steps and fell against the wall and dropped the pole. He didn’t close the door behind him and it seemed like sunlight in the hallway. He went down to a knee, mumbling to himself as if trying to explain something in a language only he could understand.

  “You and your trash,” he said. “I wish you all burnt up.”

  He stood again and he burped and laughed. Not the drunken, lost laugh of days past but the shrill of the sadistic and she knew that something had changed.

  He gathered himself. Walked over to her. Sat down on the floor with his legs against hers. In the light she saw his face for the first time. Haggard and puffy. Bruised and bizarre. She tried to place him but couldn’t.

  “You and him,” he said. His head fell back against the wall and he looked up at the ceiling. “You did it. You don’t even know it but you did it. And you been thinking all this time you were gonna be in here forever but you ain’t. Today is the day. You get to go see him cause I want you both together. You and him.”

  He took the pistol out of his pocket and showed it to her and said I’m gonna stick this in your ear. And I’m gonna pull the trigger unless you walk a straight line. I’ll pour your blood out like a piss bucket.